Shining Wings
by King Meliodas
Summary: Levi is one of the last ghouls left, and he's not okay with it, but he's dealing as well as he can. Until Erwin finds out, and hatches the plan of using an inhuman monster to fight Titans years before Eren Yeager shows up. Time to show what the original man-eaters can do. (Knowledge of Tokyo Ghoul not necessary to read, knowledge of Birth of Levi gaiden helpful.)
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

Isabel's sobs had not yet fallen silent by the time Levi returned home. The atmosphere hung tight and heavy with tension, wound ever tighter by incremental sniffles from the other side of the door.

Farlan looked up, pained. "Levi… did you kill them…?" His voice was rough with prolonged distress.

This decaying hovel of a house had seen its fair share of misery since its construction, like any house in the underground city, but Levi had never imagined that it could seem this big, this dark, this cold. Ever since he'd fished first Isabel then Farlan out of the gutters and invited them in, Levi's home had seemed positively cramped and fairly bursting with life at all hours. Levi had all but forgotten what a cold, miserable night felt like until Isabel had stormed in with half of her hair hacked off, her clothes in disarray, and her skin covered in blood and bruises. The sight and smell of her blood had awakened an ancient rage in Levi that he'd also almost forgotten.

It had reminded him that he hadn't gone hunting in months.

In the time since he'd gone out to fix that, Farlan had moved from the table to a slumped position outside of her bedroom, staring dejectedly at the floor. His red-rimmed eyes roved over Levi's bloodied figure and lingered on the wrapped knives dangling from his hand.

Levi grunted in response, moving into the room to dump the knives on the table carelessly with one hand while the other tore off his cloak and the kerchief tied around his neck. The blades weren't just for show, though he didn't in the least need them to accomplish his bloody intentions. Knives were… less messy than the alternative. In many different ways. If Levi was ever caught for killing someone with a knife, he would only be arrested as a criminal, which was nothing new. And if anybody ever found the bodies of his victims, they'd look just like innumerable others that had fallen to the underground city's lower element, if these to a slightly more psychotic element than usual. Not many victims of gang violence were found with their internal organs removed and large sections of muscle flayed from their bodies, after all.

Levi's stomach sang with warm fullness as he collapsed next to Farlan against the wall.

"…You shouldn't do things like that," his friend said quietly.

"Why the fuck shouldn't I?" They were the lowest of scum. Nobody would miss them. There was no more perfect victim, in his opinion. Not that he made 'victims' very often. For what they'd done to Isabel, he'd made an exception.

The fuckers had still smelled of her when he'd caught up to them. He'd made sure to wipe out every trace of that warm, familiar scent with the putrid stink of their fear before he'd perfumed the night with their blood, too.

Farlan wasn't looking at him anymore. "You'll get caught."

Levi snorted. "The military police don't come down here."

"The gangs. They'll notice if you start taking out their members."

With the weekly death toll what it was in the slums, Levi doubted that. That very toll was the iron chain that kept him in this stinking cesspit, even more so than his birth or state of poverty. Nobody down here noticed when people vanished. Dozens fell to gangs and illness and starvation and plain suicide every month. Levi took full advantage of this when he hunted. Very often, all he had to do was wander the streets to find his next meal freshly dead and waiting for him. As he'd said before, though, the state he left his victims in was somewhat more noticeable than the usual gang violence and general illnesses. It was a blessing that he got hungry so infrequently; rumors were already spreading through the city about the organ-thief killer. Organ-stealing was old hat in the slums, but the flayed muscles were far more unique. Any more often than once a month or so and he might actually come to the attention of somebody with the means of tracking him down. (One of the few drawbacks to his living arrangement was that there weren't a whole lot of ways to dispose of the bodies afterwards; no rivers ran down here, and burying them wasn't possible when the whole cavern was near-solid rock.)

Cannibalizing corpses dead of illness and starvation was the stuff of nightmares for a human. For a people like Levi, it was more or less the highest moral ground attainable. Nobody got hurt that hadn't already been going to, and Levi got a steady supply of meat. He hadn't chosen to be born with this fucked-up digestive tract, but he'd chosen to make the best of it that he possibly could. He'd seen what it was like to choose otherwise.

_"See, boy?"_ He could still hear the voice of the man who'd raised him, underlined by the wet, meaty sounds of a man's body being dismembered. _"If you use your knives, like me, then even if the police find the bodies they won't know it was the work of your kind. Use your head, and you can stay safe forever. People vanish every day and nobody even cares!"_

Kenny Ackerman. A demonstrable madman, but he hadn't been wrong about everything. People vanished, constantly, and all a smart man had to do to get a living was be in the right place to snatch them up. Ackerman's methods had been… wasteful. Depraved. The man hadn't even had the excuse of not being able to digest human food that Levi did. And yet, despite all of that, he had been smart enough to get away with it for years. His advice, sickening as it was, was sound.

Had Levi lost his head today? His comfortably full stomach didn't seem to think so. The dark satisfaction in his heart that increased with every one of Isabel's muffled sobs didn't seem to think so. Levi's control had lasted years, decades. Not once had he been caught. If he'd lost control tonight, it was a slip he could afford.

"I don't intend to make a habit of it," Levi finally answered, entirely truthful.

The conversation ended there, though Isabel continued to sniffle long into the night.

When he looked back on it, Levi should have taken Farlan's advice when he'd had the chance. It was only days after that conversation that they were tracked down by a squad of Survey Corps soldiers and given a choice that wasn't really a choice at all.

* * *

If those fuckers hadn't shown up holding Isabel and Farlan's arms behind their backs, the fight might have ended far worse than it did. For Erwin Smith and his cohort, that was.

The alleyway had been blessedly abandoned, up until that point. Of course, Levi had been aiming for an area that didn't see much habitual use aside from strung-out junkies, but it was still relieving to have gambled correctly on how crowded it would be. Times of day didn't mean a whole lot this far underground, and shady business was just as likely to be conducted while the sun was high as when it was low. There was hardly any way to tell when the entire city's primary light source was flickering, badly-kept lamps. For a moment, he'd thought the only thing he had gambled wrongly on was his pursuers' ability to keep up with him.

Then they'd caught up like lightning bolts out of nowhere, and Levi had reluctantly considered himself impressed. Not just anyone could keep up with him in flight. Even Isabel and Farlan fell behind when he really let loose. The rush and swoop of being airborne, the zip and zoom of casting out and retracting lines, the quick movements up, down, left, right around obstacles rushing at him at incredible speeds… It was second nature to him. It didn't even take thought to instantly recognize the best anchors to swing him where he wanted to go as he soared. Sometimes, he'd cease to feel the gear at his hips at all, and it felt as if he was propelling himself through the air like a bird. Sometimes, he'd go up as high and fast as he could and let gravity complete the illusion of total freedom in flight.

Nobody had ever thought to simply cut one of his lines before.

The bigger blond one, the one without a stupid moustache, sliced through the steel cable with a screeching _twang_ that Levi felt all the way in the roots of his teeth. There wasn't any time to redirect or release his cable. His own momentum, once a sure ally, slammed him upside-down and backwards into the nearest brick wall. He crumpled.

Furious suspicion roared along with white static through his head as the world briefly flashed out of Levi's vision. He'd thought, for a single moment when the men had first appeared, that somehow they knew. That his nighttime activities had gotten back to the military and this was the law at last catching up with him. A moment later, he'd dismissed it as baseless panic. Obviously, they were there about the stolen 3DMGs, if anything. Seeing that they were Survey Corps and not Military Police banished all suspicion immediately. Nobody would call in the Survey Corps all the way from Wall Maria to chase shadows in the underground. That held true even if that shady man hadn't warned Levi's group that the Survey Corps would be coming to recruit them. But these fighting tactics…

No. It wasn't possible that they knew. Even if they knew what he was, they couldn't possibly be aware that blunt force hits like that hurt him far worse than any blade could. Nobody knew finicky details like that, even those familiar with the ancient bedtime story that Levi's kind had become.

Still. Best to take them out immediately, Farlan's plan be damned.

Levi surged upwards at the approach of the man who'd cut his line. The attack was obvious, telegraphed so broadly that Levi might as well have taken out an ad in the newspaper, but his speed was such that the man had no time to even flinch before Levi was disarming him with a powerful blow to the arm. His sword spun wildly away, and _then_ the man flinched, but Levi was striking again, and again, and…

"Stop! Look around you!"

And then his attention was being pulled towards his friends, bound and being dragged into the alley by the soldiers who had gone after them. Levi froze in the act of pummeling his target, indecisive. Was he fast enough? Could he get both of the soldiers before one of them got a sword into one of his friends? Should he put a knife to their leader's throat instead?

He hesitated too long. A breath of cold steel tickled against the side of his neck, held by the Corpsman with the terrible moustache. Levi eyed it, unimpressed, still calculating his best move. He supposed that if any blade could cut him, a thrice-folded Titan blade might. He'd never had occasion to find out before. He slid his gaze sideways to meet Farlan's, questioning.

_Fight back?_

Farlan grimaced at him. _Don't ruin the plan._

Of course. The stupid fucking plan. With bad grace, Levi held still and submitted to the manacles being fastened around his wrists by the Squad Leader—the one who'd cut his lines and whose face was beginning to darken with the bruises caused by Levi's fists. He had those marks as small consolation against the abject humiliation of being shoved to his knees in the filthy muck of the alleyway alongside of his friends. It was basically no comfort at all by the time his face was being shoved into that muck.

_Farlan's plan had better be worth this shit._

The only silver lining to it Levi could see was that while he remained suspicious of Lobov's motives, one part of the deal was rapidly gaining allure. If completing this fool's errand meant getting to kill Erwin Smith, as the man who'd cut his line had just introduced himself, then Levi was all for it.

He agreed to join the Survey Corps with a mirthless, predator's smile.

_I can't wait to chew your throat out._

* * *

The plan to join the Survey Corps had been stupid, Levi reflected, looking around at the crowded mess hall. It had been beyond stupid. He cursed himself daily for acquiescing to it, no matter what bullcrap Farlan had spouted about stealing documents, double-crossing their employer, and living full lives aboveground (and double no matter what threats those bastards had been spouting about sending them to jail—Levi wasn't some pathetic human who pissed all over himself when shown a blade). He'd given into temptation in the heat of the moment, imagining throttling that smug look right off of Erwin Smith's smug fucking face, and was now regretting it fully. The mess hall was loud, unbearably so to ears so used to the miserable stillness of the underground district. Everyone was chatting with each other, gesturing widely, eating with their mouths open… It was repulsive. Levi and Farlan huddled together at one end of the closest table to the door, put off by the liveliness of the Survey Corps as well as the nasty looks most of them were aiming in the criminals' direction. Those looks were all that kept Isabel nearby, though she bounced in her seat and was obviously, avidly eavesdropping on every conversation in earshot. She ate without attending to her food at all. Probably this was the reason she hadn't yet noticed that her dinner was twice as large as usual, after Levi had slipped his food off of his plate and onto hers.

He was going to get himself found out and killed within days. There was no getting around it. Hiding his true nature while living aboveground was even harder than he'd ever imagined it could be. For one thing, the military was strict with its recruits' schedules. Levi didn't have time to duck out and find food that he could actually eat unless he wanted to trade his already-limited sleep for it. For another, communal meals like this one were the norm. So far nobody had noticed his complete avoidance of food, but he couldn't slip by unnoticed forever. Sooner or later somebody would note that they'd never once observed him eating at mealtimes, and it would get around that something was unnatural about the new recruit beyond his shady past. Farlan and Isabel were thankfully used to his habit of slipping food to them when forced to eat in public, and conditioned not to ask questions. Presumably they thought he was a shy eater or some nonsense like that.

Isabel bounced hard on her hands and let out an excited whoop as a nearby soldier came to the moment of triumph in his recounted story of his first sortie with a Titan. The storyteller, who had not been aware of his extra audience, broke off mid-sentence at the sound to turn an offended eye on the innocently-grinning girl. Farlan and Levi shared a commiserating look across the table as Isabel proceeded to demand to know what happened next.

"At least she's adjusting," Farlan offered. "That's a good thing, since we might be here longer than we'd thought."

Levi hadn't imagined that this plan would take months. He'd thought that it would be days, weeks at best before he could murder that blond bastard and flee back to the safe haven of his filthy sewers. Farlan could do what he liked with those secret documents, Levi would help as far as he was able, and if everything went well maybe he could set his friends up with a semi-decent life afterwards. That had seemed worth the risk at the time, too, but every part of this plan so far was proving much more difficult than anticipated.

"Mmm," he hummed noncommittally. Purely for show, he lifted a nearby cup brimming with tea by gripping the rim with his fingertips and brought it to his mouth. The position of his hand hid his mouth as he tipped the cup. Specifically, it hid the way he tipped it just until the putrid liquid touched his lips and no further. The cup sloshed with fullness as he replaced it on the table. It was a trick he'd discovered long ago, and for once not one he'd learned at the feet of his adoptive father. Another odd quirk of his that Isabel and Farlan had long ago accepted and learned not to question.

This, too, wouldn't sustain him forever. Somebody would eventually notice that he always dumped out a full cup of liquid at the end of his meals. Alone, it wasn't much of a clue, but if he gave them enough little clues to build up a larger suspicion…

Of course, the biggest problem of all was one he'd been trying desperately to ignore throughout not only this meal, but every previous meal and day of training as well.

He was getting hungry.

He hadn't planned for this. Days or weeks without eating, he could handle. Months was pushing it, even for his kind. His stomach felt like it was caving in, like it was trying to pull in sustenance through sheer gravitational force. His mouth watered at the overwhelming stink of human sweat that permeated the barracks each day after training. This lively group of soldiers at their meals looked to him like a buffet, all packed in together in moving, squirming, fragrant bunches. All day long, he was distracted. A soldier shot across his path midair while training with 3DM gear, and Levi's instincts shrieked at him to give chase. A soldier pulled off his shirt for his turn in the showers, and Levi's eyes dropped immediately to his abdomen, calculating muscle mass and fat content and imagining how easily his teeth could pierce the skin and spill juicy intestines across the shower tiles. A soldier swallowed a bite of food and Levi felt the bob of their throat as a movement in his own, convulsive and needy. He was _hungry_.

"You're quieter than usual. Hate crowds that much?" Farlan broke into his thoughts.

Levi scowled, resisted the urge to snap back that of course he did. The hunger was making him more irritable than usual. "I was thinking about turning in early."

Farlan's eyebrows rose. "You feeling okay, man? That's not like you. I don't think I've ever seen you get sick before…"

"I'm not sick." Only in the head, maybe. For a brief, crazy moment, Levi considered telling Farlan. Asking for his help. Surely together, the two (or three, even) of them could come up with a way to keep Levi fed without anybody in the Corps finding out. Farlan's plans were reckless, more often than not, but he was chock full of them. He would have some idea what to do.

Except that Levi couldn't really picture a scenario where Farlan didn't jerk away from him while his face fell in horror. He couldn't picture Isabel helping him plan sneaking out to kill and eat a human being any more than he could picture _her_ killing and eating a human being. They'd be horrified, terrified, and most of all furious. They might attack him. They might report him. They'd certainly never keep sitting together with him in this isolated bubble of camaraderie against the harsh opinions of the world.

That wasn't… something he was prepared to deal with. It wasn't that bad. He wasn't weak. He could take care of his own fucking self, even now.

"_You're going to be alone your entire life_," the man who'd raised him had said. "_You'd better be able to take care of yourself."_

"I'll be fine on my own. You two stay as long as you want." With that, Levi rose from the table and exited the mess hall. He could feel Farlan's eyes on his back the whole way out, until the door thumped shut behind him. Isabel hadn't appeared to notice his exit at all, which was just as well. He didn't need nosey, concerned friends coming around and ruining his plans.

Nobody had ever known Levi's true nature. Nobody aside from that one man. He supposed that his mother must have had some sort of fucking inkling, but she was dead now, and Captain Ackerman was the only person on the planet who knew what Levi truly was.

So no, going to Isabel and Farlan for help was not an option at all. If Levi had his way, they'd live and die without ever knowing what kinds of sins he was committing while their backs were turned.

Hours later found Levi prowling through the nighttime streets surrounding Survey Corps Headquarters. The night was clear and gorgeous, the sky ornamented with a thousand cheerful stars. A warm breeze blew through the air, embracing everyone it found with gentle comfort. Many people were out, crowding the streets, and the festival air of unseasonably good weather hung over every call and laugh to echo through the darkening city.

Levi's stomach was a black sucking void of hunger.

He'd lied in his bed for hours, awaiting the return of his bunkmates. The blanket had covered the fact that he still wore his daytime clothes—which was to say, his uniform. Farlan had slunk past him to his own bunk, casting the same scrutinizing look over Levi's prone form as he had cast across Levi's back in the mess hall. In the end, he hadn't disturbed Levi. He'd crawled into his bunk peacefully and eventually his breathing had evened out and joined the nighttime symphony of their bunkmates. When every body appeared submerged in slumber, Levi had at last arisen silently from his bed and slipped between the bunks out into the night.

It had been surprisingly easy to slip out of headquarters in the middle of the night. Levi got the impression that even a normal human might have managed easily, unaided by his extra boost in agility and speed. It probably shouldn't have been that surprising, all things considered. Military corruption ran bone-deep, and it wasn't like anyone expected soldiers to give up drinking or partying, even if they were training the next generation of recruits. It was convenient, if morally disgusting. It also meant that there were likely several bars within walking distance of the compound, which was also fairly convenient. Bars drew lowlifes like candles drew moths. Maybe, just maybe, there'd be some scum deserving of an encounter with a starving madman hanging around.

He hadn't been able to wrangle a cloak under his sheets, but more traditional methods of anonymity were a lot smaller. The legends said that his kind had once worn masks when they went out to hunt. Levi had never had the means nor inclination to make a proper one, but the kerchief he used when cleaning had always covered the lower half of his face well enough to serve. On such a warm night, it might have drawn attention, but his uniform easily deflected all concerns of any passerby. The Survey Corps was unpopular, but not generally accused of being burglars. In any case, he was visibly unarmed, and in full sight of dozens of people in the streets. His appearance didn't raise much alarm. His prey would never see him coming.

He held onto that thought well past midnight, when the first two bars had turned up nobody worse than a few rowdy drunkards and Wall Garrison troops who might or might not have been on duty. Nobody who deserved the end that Levi had to offer. It had been a slim hope, some part of him acknowledged. However pessimistic an outlook he had on life, it still hadn't seemed likely that he would meet somebody who truly deserved an ignoble, selfish death just by walking the streets for a few hours. The larger part of him was just getting desperate. The pangs of hunger in his stomach had turned to shooting starbursts of pain. He was starting not to care how deserving his victim was, and that more than anything was dangerous.

Luckily, just when he was about to call it a night, the third bar bore fruit. A few streets down, in an alley off of the street too narrow for a horse, the sounds of scuffling were loud above the distant noises of revelry. Cloth shifted, flesh slid against flesh, something hit the dirt with a solid thump, and a woman groaned. It was not a happy sound. Levi peered down the dim alley from around the corner, angling himself to remain hidden.

Struggling figures resolved themselves out of the twilight to make an unexpected tableau. From the sounds, Levi had been expecting some kind of drunken sexual assault. Instead, a woman in the uniform of the Wall Garrison stood bent over the limp body of another, smaller woman in civvies. The civilian woman was young and attractive with vibrantly red hair, and also tied hand and foot, sprawled unconscious on the ground. The soldier was attempting to manhandle her towards an empty wooden crate stamped 'FRAGILE' that stood atop a wheeled pallet nearby, and was apparently having trouble maintaining a grip on her insubstantial party clothes.

Human trafficker, Levi recognized instantly. Pretty young girls vanished from the slums sometimes, but more often the victims were middle-class citizens of Wall Maria or Wall Rose. Better-kempt, usually had all of their teeth, and rarely knew how to fight back the way girls who'd grown up like Isabel had did. They were sold to corrupt military and political officials in the capital more often than not.

The thought, the very fucking thought, had Levi's eyes bleeding black into the sclera and blood red into the iris until his eyes were discs of darkness and horror. His bloodlust rose like a roaring in his ears. The faint voice in the back of his head which was noting that female human traffickers were nearly always former victims themselves was drowned out entirely. He didn't care. He couldn't care. He couldn't remember the last time the hunger had been this painful. He wasn't going to find anybody better tonight, maybe ever.

"_These scum deserve it,"_ Ackerman had said. Levi couldn't remember why that thought had used to make him nauseous. Now it only made him hungry.

The woman was looking down at a scrap of torn cloth in her hands and cursing when a hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle bowled her backwards. Her head rebounded off of the cobblestone ground with a sickening crack that left a smear of red wetness behind. She didn't have time to make a sound before Levi's knife bisected her trachea, spilling more red wetness onto the cobbles.

Levi crouched atop of her dying body for a few moments, breathing heavily, staring at that redness. At last, he wrenched himself away long enough to saw through the unconscious girl's bonds and hoist her limp body into the crate that had been her intended prison. Shoving her out into the streets in this state was like not saving her at all; at least in there she'd be somewhat sheltered until she woke up and could make her way home. He placed the lid on the crate as neatly as he could.

Then, quick as thought, he was back atop the dead trafficker, all but drooling. Hunting for live prey wasn't something he did often, but this was a part he was infinitely familiar with. It took only a few expert slashes of his knives before Levi was triumphantly removing the slippery lump that was the woman's heart. In his eagerness, he didn't bother with rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. It was all he could do to shove his mask up before he was biting deeply into the muscular meat, blood spurting across his lower face and sleeves alike. It only took a few bites to devour the entire organ, capillaries crunching between his molars and blood dribbling down his chin. Another slash opened up her abdomen, revealing the wet glisten of her digestive tract. Heart and liver first, Levi knew instinctively, even lost as he was in the bloody ecstasy of a meal so long deferred. Those were the most nutritious, and also the best-tasting.

Her liver was extracted and halfway to his mouth when a nearby rustle caught his attention. Something cold and hard just barely kissed the nape of his neck above his collar.

"Don't move." A deep voice, guttural with fury, commanded. A familiar voice, for all he'd never heard it speak in that tone before.

Levi stiffened all over, the shell of bloodlust surrounding him cracking straight down the center at the sound of that voice. He obeyed more out of shock than any desire to submit. The liver slithered out of his stunned grip to hit the cobblestones with an obscene splat. Every fiber of his body was jumping with shock. He'd been caught. He'd been _caught_. This was first time he'd ever been caught in his entire life. He'd thought—he'd hoped… But he'd been caught, at last, just when he'd thought his cover was more secure than it had ever been.

He'd been caught by that fucking blond bastard Erwin Smith.

"Turn around. Slowly." Erwin's voice didn't waver. Well, he was an officer in the Survey Corps. He'd probably never stumbled across a man cannibalizing a corpse, but he'd likely seen much worse done by Titans in the field. The Survey Corps was difficult to shock. And damn them, they had quick reflexes. The coming fight was going to be pretty tough. Thank God he'd managed to get down at least part of his meal before the bastard had showed up.

Playing meek, Levi obeyed, lifting his bloodied hands into sight and slowly turning to face his erstwhile superior. As he'd thought, the man was at the ready, swords out and in position, as unwavering as a stone statue. Gleaming steel moved from his nape to hover threateningly beneath his chin. Levi stayed determinedly still as the tip flashed sharply upwards in the moonlight. His kerchief mask fluttered to the ground in two separate pieces.

Erwin's mask of cold determination slipped visibly as Levi's face was revealed beneath the makeshift mask. Aside from being one of the last people Erwin might have expected to find in this position, Levi imagined he looked a sight, blood all across his face, throat, shirt, and arms. He'd lost control over his usual fastidiousness, driven by the aching hunger. The spots of blood itched at him like ants on his skin now that he was more aware. He couldn't see them, but he knew that his eyes were flushed the deep, inhuman red of a ghoul's kakugan.

"Levi?" Erwin's hands still didn't waver. "Is that you?"

"Yeah. It's me." Levi grated out. His voice was low and full of gravel, only partly owing to his transformation. Most of it was frustration, and just a little dash of humiliation thrown in for good measure. He hadn't eaten in forever. He was still starving. That was still no balm to his pride, no excuse for this lapse in his vigilance. He'd never wanted to be caught crouched over a corpse like a mindless fucking beast, not by anyone, certainly not by the holier-than-thou Captain Smith. Even if it was just for a little while, even if he murdered the man right here to keep his secret, it was galling. Ackerman hadn't yet been caught, and he'd been doing this for _decades_.

"What… is this? What _are_ you?" the man bit out, uncertainty warring with fury in his face. He was obviously shaken. Who wouldn't be? It was clear by the unnatural hue of Levi's eyes that this was something far more outlandish than the relatively simple scenario of stumbling across a psychopath at work. Levi was no Titan, but he obviously wasn't human, either. Ghouls were legends, Ackerman had told him. So humanity thought. Stories of them existed dating back to before the appearance of Titans, but in a hundred years nobody had ever seen one. As far as anyone on the street knew, they'd either always been myths or they'd vanished along with 90% of humanity in the onslaught of the Titans. Levi was living proof that at least a handful had made it into the walls, but even he had no idea where they were hiding or how many were left. His father was missing, his mother was dead, and the man who'd raised him only knew as much about ghouls as any other person who'd heard the myths. All he knew of his own kind was from stories. He was actually a little bit interested in whether Erwin would be able to connect what he was seeing to the childhood ghost stories.

Not interested enough to wait around and see, though.

_Sorry, Farlan, looks like I can't keep that promise after all._

Levi launched himself backwards into a roll, scooping up his knives from the ground and avoiding the slash of swords that followed his descent. Armed once more, he braced and sprang forwards. His foot ground the woman's liver into a greasy smear beneath his sole.

The first rush was by necessity turned into a smooth dive beneath the second swipe of Erwin's swords. He lashed out in kind with his shorter blades, but his prey vanished beneath their arcs, and Levi was tossed away by a powerful booted blow to the ribs. There was no room in this damned alleyway! Levi hit the wall hard and instantly dropped to the ground, barely avoiding the sword that slammed home into the plaster wall. He rolled and sprang to his feet behind Erwin, but the man was already twisting. The second sword was caught with a screech against Levi's crossed knives for a bare moment before the smaller, weaker blades snapped apart.

Levi jerked away, but not quickly enough. The sword's tip drew a line of blood across his bicep, shredding his blood-splattered shirt.

So that was that answered. At least now he knew that there really hadn't been any way out of the deal that had led him to this point.

The cut felt like a red-hot wire being held continuously against his skin. Levi had never been cut before in his life.

He danced backwards to avoid Erwin's pressing attacks, fetching up against the opposite wall of the alley far too soon. There was no room…! With a frustrated snarl, Levi ducked a strike from Erwin's free fist—he had abandoned the stuck sword in the wall—and launched himself deliberately at the opposite wall. A few quick, zigzagging springs had him up to the rooftops in seconds, perched on the very edge of the shingled slope and whirling around bare instants before the familiar _zip-thud _of a 3DM line hit his ears. Then Erwin was on him, single remaining sword swinging for the neck, cloak flaring out behind him like wings against the night sky.

Levi didn't need wings, or a sword or 3DM. He had enough space to move now.

Erwin didn't have time to complete his swing before his arm was caught and used as a lever to slam him headfirst into the roof. Shingles exploded in all directions. The sword was wrenched from his grasp and tossed carelessly aside. The soldier struggled futilely. Though Levi was much smaller in every dimension, his strength was incredible, and his speed doubly so. Erwin hadn't stood a ghost of a chance once they'd reached the roof.

For a moment, in the wake of the brief fight's intensity, absolute silence fell. Both men gasped for breath and glared in silence.

It was broken by Erwin. "What _are_ you?" he asked again, yanking against the grip on his arms. He didn't budge an inch.

Above him, Levi snarled wordlessly, mind racing. Shit, this wasn't good. Erwin was a soldier. A fucking officer, even. He'd be missed. Worse, he might even be avenged. Before tonight, he'd planned to make the man's death look accidental, or natural, or something that might at least confuse suspicion away from him long enough for him to vanish back into the underground. Now… there would be no doubt. Levi gone in the middle of the night, Erwin following, and then the man found gutted and half-eaten on a rooftop? There would be retribution. They might even discover the trail of his previous meals. This wasn't going to work.

Not killing him wasn't an option either. Levi had been caught, and he couldn't let that stand. Better to be hunted down as a human murderer than a ghoul. That, too, was a piece of childhood advice that had carried great weight, coming as it did from an actual human murderer. Ackerman was already one too many people who knew about Levi, though there wasn't much he could do about the old man as things stood.

Couldn't kill. Couldn't let live. What a steaming shitpile of a choice.

Beneath his racing mind, Levi could feel his mouth flooding with saliva, his stomach roaring with emptiness. He'd barely gotten to eat any of that woman. He was _starving_. He had a human pinned down right here, helpless, and it was making him so fucking hungry that he couldn't think straight. The delicious smells of human sweat and blood were all around him, seeping through him like water, and his gaze was locked on to the movement of the man's chest. That was where the heart beat behind the fragile ribs, juicy and meaty and full of salty blood that would just burst out of it when he bit down…

Focus. He had to focus. He had to decide if it was worth it, before all powers of deciding were beyond him and he became nothing more than a ravenous beast. A fucking Titan in human skin. The thoughts in his head disgusted him.

Still, he had to swallow before he could speak. "Who… does anyone know you're out here?"

Erwin, somehow, looked completely calm. "Even if nobody did, I could just lie to you, you realize."

"No you couldn't, dipshit, I can fucking smell lies," Levi bullshitted on the spot. "Answer the question before I rip your arms off." He flexed his grip, straining the man's shoulder joints painfully, demonstrating exactly how easy it would be for him. Like plucking flower petals. Erwin grimaced, but otherwise showed no signs of fear or submission.

"I'm not stupid, Levi. A recruit got up to use the bathroom and noticed that you were missing. As soon as he reported, I had my men secure your cohorts in an isolated room. If they don't hear from me by morning, they have their orders."

Isabel and Farlan. Levi froze in place, all thoughts of bloodlust fleeing his mind. He felt like he'd had a bucket of ice water dumped over him. Fuck. _Fuck_. This paranoid asshole—he was good. He was too good. Levi was so stupid! Of course he'd been out looking for the missing criminal. Of course this encounter hadn't been an accident. He should have stuffed something under the covers of his bunk. He should have hunted further afield, mindful that any local crime might be traced back to the resident criminal element. He should have… He should have…

God, it was too late. He was well and truly fucked this time, wasn't he?

"You'd let innocent people die, just to get revenge on me?" he demanded, emphasizing his rage by slamming the man against the shingles again. "They have nothing to do with this, you bastard! They're not like me!"

"I only have your word for that," Erwin pointed out, still infuriatingly calm. Infuriatingly superior. Unflappable fucking bastard, trying to sound so aloof when he was the one pinned to the shingles with a hungry ghoul salivating inches away from his fucking throat! Then, icing on the cake, he added, "You sacrificed yourself for them once before. I wonder if that still applies now."

Incandescent fury lit Levi's blood-red eyes. "I only have _your_ word that you told anyone at all, much less gave any orders."

"I thought you could smell lies?"

With an inarticulate growl of rage, Levi's hands sprang away from his prisoner. He rose and backed away, tightly coiled to attack at any moment. He made an effort to breathe slowly, evenly, trying to control the rage and hunger that howled inside of him. "What the fuck do you want, then?"

Erwin levered himself upright slowly, not taking his eyes off of Levi even to look for his missing sword. "I want to know what you are."

Levi scoffed. "Just kill me if you're going to kill me, shitstain, don't pussyfoot around it."

"Answer the question first."

"A ghoul! I'm a fucking ghoul, okay?" Levi snapped, gesturing sharply at his eyes. "What, did the fucking kakugan not tip you off? Or do high society military brats not get told ghost stories like everybody else?"

"A ghoul." Erwin moved closer, movements deliberately slow. Levi didn't think he could stiffen any further, but somehow he managed. His face was twisted in what must have been a horrifying rictus. "Ghouls are a myth."

"As you can clearly see." Sarcasm oozed around the edges of a snarl.

Finally, Erwin took his eyes off of Levi to search for his lost sword. The 3DM lines, still embedded in the edge of the roof, retracted into their coils with a low whirr. Levi just stood there, frozen in place while the man fully turned his back to retrieve the blade. Fuck him. Fuck his smug assurance. Fuck him for humiliating Levi like this. Just… fuck him.

At last, Erwin turned back, holding up his sword to inspect it for cracks. As if that little bit of tossing around could put a nick in a thrice-folded steel Titan blade. The thing practically gleamed with lethality in the moonlight.

"So?"

Erwin glanced up. "So what?"

Levi's teeth clenched. "So are we going to do this here, or do you want to get back to street level first?"

Erwin blinked. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"You! Killing me!" Levi barked. "Do you really need me to spell it out? How the fuck do you find your asshole to take a shit in the morning, do you need a fucking map?!"

"I'm not going to kill you."

That brought him up sharply. "…What?"

"Not right now, at least. You're going to come to headquarters with me without making a scene, and I'll tell my men to let yours get back to their training. Then, you and I are going to talk. At length." A corner of his mouth turned up, dry and mirthless. "I know someone who's going to be dying to meet you."

The humiliation burned like swallowed bile throughout Levi's entire body. He itched and chafed where tacky blood was drying on his skin. His stomach ached sharply, and his kakugan did not want to go away no matter how much he tried to calm down.

What kind of fucking choice did he have?

Levi followed behind Erwin like an obedient dog as he leaped back into the alley to retrieve the sword embedded in the wall. He didn't protest when the green Survey Corps cloak was dropped over his head to hide the blood and red eyes. He stayed meek and silent as a shadow as the man informed the authorities of a murder two streets down from the local tavern. And he walked pretty as you please behind Erwin straight through headquarters into a small basement room, and didn't fight back when the barred door was shut behind him and locked with a scraping click.

He curled up once he was sure he was alone and hated hated _hated_ Erwin Smith.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

As it turned out, there were worse people than Erwin Smith in the world. God help him.

"Hello, there! My name's Hange Zoe!" the woman on the other side of the bars grinned, excitement stamped in every line of her body. She was an average-looking woman of average height, with nondescript brown hair and an unadorned Corps officer's uniform. There would have been nothing at all unusual about her appearance if she hadn't been so lit up by unholy glee. She was literally bouncing on her toes, clutching the bars of Levi's cell in both hands. Erwin stood beside and behind her with his arms folded, apparently unalarmed by her actions.

Levi, who was just coming awake from the sound of the thick scrape of the cell block door, glared tiredly at the both of them, wondering what the hell was going on now. What time was it? Sunlight was coming in through the small, barred window at the top of his cell, but it didn't quite reach the corner Levi was coiled in, and without knowing what direction the building was facing it was difficult to gauge the time by that alone. He couldn't hear any sounds of activity or birds through it. Early morning? Late afternoon? The soldiers had brought a lamp with them and hung it on a nail hammered into the plaster wall in the narrow space beyond the barred wall. Between it and the sunlight, Levi could see his new prison far better than he had the night before. It was a fairly luxurious place, for all the bars bisecting the room. Unused bed, clean-looking latrine bench in the back, plaster-over-stone walls, and no apparent loops to anchor any chains to. Perhaps this was where they put trainees who snuck out to bars for very different purposes than consumption of the local criminal element. It did seem an odd place to stick a known ghoul, though perhaps they hadn't had any more secure cells in the immediate area.

Of equal perplexity but more immediate importance was the question of the woman's appearance here at all. Last night, Erwin had mentioned something about meeting somebody, he remembered that now. This must have been her. Did that mean that she was the only one he'd reported Levi to? Or did the whole military know by now that the training camp had a mythical man-eater locked up in its basement? Probably the courtyard outside his window would be in a tad bit more of an uproar if he had, so maybe not.

Erwin's expression held no more clues than the stone wall behind his head. "Hange is a science officer with the Survey Corps. She specializes in studying Titans."

That evoked a disgusted scoff from the prisoner. "Do you need to stick a match down your ears to melt out all the wax in there? Or just an eye transplant? I'm not a goddamn Titan."

"Of course you're not!" Hange declared, throwing herself against the bars in a passion, rattling the rusty metal loudly. "You're _even better_! Oh, he can talk and respond and everything! This is going to be so much _fun_!" Her shoulders shook with broken giggles.

Actually, upon reflection, Levi supposed that Erwin really was worse than Hange after all. If the man had an ounce of mercy in his entirely-too-large body, he'd have run Levi through in the alley no questions asked instead of turning him over to this madwoman who was practically salivating all over the cell. He resolved not to feed her psychosis for as long as possible.

"What the fuck is this all about, Smith? Am I a lab rat now?"

"For the foreseeable future, yes," Erwin acknowledged readily. "I want Hange to study you as thoroughly as she can, discover what your abilities are, how different you are from a Titan as well as from a human. Depending on these results, you might be very useful to us."

"Who is us?" Levi's eyes gleamed flatly from the dark corner of his cell. "The Survey Corps? The military?"

"Humanity." There was no trace of a joke in Erwin's face or voice. Levi snorted out a laugh anyway.

"The only use I can be of to humanity is as an executioner."

"That's exactly what makes you so special!" Hange pointed, sticking her arm through the bars to jab a finger in Levi's direction. "Ghouls ate mankind long before the Titans showed up, if the myths are true at all! Don't you think there has to be some sort of connection there? Nobody knows where the Titans came from, or why they're so determined to eat us all. Did they evolve from ghouls, or maybe from a common ancestor? Do they have similar limitations or abilities? You, a rare surviving ghoul, could be the very missing link in the mystery that helps us understand the Titans!"

Understand them to destroy them, was the implication that went unsaid. Levi understood that very well. The same went for ghouls. Levi had come from somewhere, after all. There might still be others of his kind scattered throughout the walls, preying on the already-depleted human population like Titans in disguise. Aberrant Titans at that, capable of thoughts and plans and cruelty. The very idea caused a shudder of horrified revulsion to course down Levi's spine. He could only imagine how magnified that revulsion was in humans. He couldn't in all good conscience blame Erwin for taking preventative measures against this new, hideous enemy of mankind.

That didn't mean he was fine with any of this, though. "Why should I cooperate?" He didn't need to make threats. Erwin had felt the strength of his body last night. He'd lost that fight almost instantly, unprepared for Levi's sheer speed and overwhelming strength. He had to know that that wasn't even the best Levi could do—he was weak, he was hungry, he hadn't finished his meal, and above all, he had yet to unleash a ghoul's signature weapon, the one that all of the stories hinged around. Levi hadn't yet used his kagune. It was obvious that the minute either Erwin or Hange got within arm's reach of him, he could overpower them and flee, find Isabel and Farlan and get them out of harm's way before vanishing back into the vastness of the underground caverns.

"That is…" Hange's face fell, tilting so that her bangs fell across her face. Her arm lowered from its triumphant jab to hang at her side. "That's actually part of the first test." The arm dipped into her pocket, and came up once more with a small pistol in its grip. Without a moment's hesitation, she drew the trigger.

Levi's left leg exploded in pain. He hissed, a rattling, animal sound, his eyes flushing red within instants as he curled around the limb. Beneath his hands, a flattened circle of metal dropped to the wooden floors with a soft _clink_.

"Ah! I'm so sorry!" Hange moaned wretchedly. The pistol dangled by her side, her shoulders slumped, her expression painfully earnest. "It looks like you really do feel pain, huh? Poor Levi! We'll have to leave it for now to gauge the healing rate. Multiple wounds will have to be another day, depending on blood loss. I know it hurts, but would you be willing to try to stand for me? Please?"

Levi told her to fuck herself up the ass with a Titan-sized spiked dildo. He did not lift his hands away to show her that it wasn't bleeding at all.

Hange all but died on the spot, writhing in place and groaning. "Oh, my poor dear, I'm _so sorry_—but we couldn't trust you if you just _told_ us your limits and abilities! We have no guarantee you would be telling us the truth! Frankly, we're taking it on faith at the moment that you actually feel human emotions instead of just being able to fake them very, very well! Don't you worry, once we know for sure how different you really are from a human, you won't have to be in pain anymore!"

Levi leaned his head back against the wall, grateful for the cool plaster against his sweaty neck. The woman's histrionics were in no way endearing him to her. If anything, her affected solicitousness was worse than callous experimentation. "You can't possibly expect me to just accept that shit cheerfully," he grated out.

"We don't," Hange conceded, her voice lowering a bit, and her eyebrows drawing up in the center. She half-shrugged, a demonstrably helpless movement. "But believe me when I say that however necessary, I'm not enjoying it. I'll enjoy it even less once I'm completely sure your emotions and pain are really real just like ours."

"And what? You're just gonna keep me locked up here and shoot out my fucking kneecaps every few hours as they grow back for how long? That shit isn't gonna keep me docile, it's just gonna piss me the fuck off." He clenched his teeth, furious and humiliated but desperate to know, "What about Isabel and Farlan? What are you going to do to them?"

Hange and Erwin exchanged glances, Hange's eyebrows lifted in surprise and Erwin's knowingly. It was the man who answered. "We've told your fellow recruits that you're being disciplined for breaking trainee curfew rules. Your subordinates will stay with the others, but we will be keeping a close watch on them. If you try to break out, I will give the order to have them executed as traitors to humankind."

Levi gritted his teeth. _They're not my fucking subordinates, idiot. And they'll come looking for me no matter what bullshit story you spin about discipline._ That thought was almost more worrying than reassuring. What would Levi tell them if they found him like this? How could he possibly explain how he'd ended up this way, much less why he was taking it like a fucking capital call-girl?

He didn't have any answers for that. His mind was still floating in a sea of pain, fury, and hunger. He couldn't think as clearly as he needed to, to figure out a way out of this. There had to be a way. He couldn't end his life like this, humiliated and tormented like a circus bear for the amusement of sadistic scientists. He wouldn't let himself die like that.

"And shooting isn't all we're going to do!" Hange added, her smile returning in small, diminished form. From nowhere, she whipped out a pen and clipboard. "We're also going to talk!"

"I thought you couldn't trust a word I said."

"Not at face value without any extra testing, no, but what you say can give us direction or ideas about what to try next, not to mention warn us before we accidentally do something that might kill you! That would be terrible, so make sure to tell me if you're in too much pain, alright?"

Levi's snarl was as inhuman as his hiss. It was a deep, fearsome sound that human vocal chords would have sounded pathetic trying to imitate. It was the sound of humanity's oldest predator, a sound that evoked a primitive, instinctive fear in the human brain.

Hange shivered in delight at the sound, wreathed in grins once more. "That's the spirit! Now, since we're on the subject, I want to ask you about your pain tolerance. Would you say it's much higher than a human's, or about the same? Or even lower, maybe, since you're not used to it?"

"I'll leave you two to it." Erwin turned for the stairs, pausing at the door to cast one last look at the prisoner over his shoulder. "I've ordered the building evacuated, so nobody should hear if things get loud, but I'll put a trustworthy guard at the door. Give a shout if he tries anything, Hange."

"Mm-hmm," Hange waved the hand with the pen in it absently.

Erwin's eyes turned back to the ghoul behind iron bars. "I have great hopes for you, Levi. Even greater than before. I really do think you're going to be the key that wins us this war." With that, he vanished.

* * *

The ruse didn't last very long. Eventually, Levi gave up clutching at his leg, and Hange realized that bullets couldn't pierce his skin. Painful repeat shots were made in the interest of scientific rigor, and Levi discovered that bullets hurt far more when he was this weak and hungry than they usually did. He had to check the last two to make sure that they hadn't, in fact, pierced skin. That reminded him to check the cut he'd gotten on his arm last night. He found that it had long since scabbed over, but it hadn't yet healed, which was worrisome.

Worrisome, but not surprising. Levi's stomach was cramping with pain. He was finding it difficult to banish his kakugan now, too. He'd turned his back to the bars some time ago, partially to irritate the scientist and partially to hide how out-of-control he was getting. Ackerman would clock him one good if he could see Levi now. He'd never been this hungry in his whole life.

Time sort of drifted, once he'd made the decision to ignore Hange's questions entirely. Nobody tried shooting him again or anything else to draw his attention. It was easy to let awareness fade into the boiling spring of blood-edged pain in his gut. Because of this, he wasn't entirely aware of how long the interim had been before he suddenly came aware to find himself pressed up against cold iron in lines down his front, his arm hanging through to the other side where Hange stood with a sword raised. His hands were clawed, and his lips pulled back from his teeth like a slavering dog.

Hange's pen rolled across the floor until it hit the bars at Levi's feet. She stood still as stone, watching him. With a hissed curse, Levi pushed himself back from the bars and clenched his hands into the fabric of his pants. He had to swallow twice to clear his mouth of saliva before he could speak, hoarsely.

"I said some crazy shit, didn't I?"

Hange didn't move from her wary stance. "It was mostly curses until you lunged, and then it was just a few threats to eat me. Do you lose control like this often?" Her voice was carefully controlled, with none of the eager drama she'd been speaking with before.

Levi backed away more. He was horrified with himself and hungry and angry and in far too much pain to have any patience for mind games or stubborn refusals. Besides, he owed the woman something; he might have killed her for no other reason than that she was convenient if the bars hadn't been there.

Human life was not something to be wasted on convenience or idle whim. He'd learned this for himself, he'd _decided_ on it. His foster-father had been furious and disgusted with him. He'd asked if Levi was just going to starve himself for the sake of preserving lives that had no worth aside from their deaths.

Levi had answered that every life had worth aside from death. That had been the time he'd fled his childhood home in the dead of night, beaten half to death and desperate with self-hatred. He'd found his way into the underground in a matter of weeks, both hiding from Ackerman and seeking a steady supply of corpses. He'd thought he'd achieved the height of morality possible for a creature like him.

He'd just tried to rip Hange apart with his bare hands because she happened to be in the same room as him.

"No, never. I've never been this hungry in my life." One hand migrated to clench in the fabric of his shirt over his cramping, aching hollow of a stomach.

"Nothing like a Titan, then," Hange was beginning to light up, he could see it coming. She lowered her sword and retrieved her clipboard of notes from the floor. She made a move towards her pen, paused, looked at Levi's proximity to the bars (or possibly his still-activated kakugan), and left it there. "That is, you feel gradually increasing hunger the longer you go without eating which causes you to become emotionally unstable, is that right?"

"It hurts. Hunger makes humans weak. It makes ghouls forget to hold themselves back." Each sentence was bitten out. Levi continued to back away until the backs of his knees hit the still-unused bed behind him. He sat with a thump and hunched over his gut, grimacing. Hange took the chance to swiftly scoop up her pen and begin to scribble furiously.

"Fascinating! And when does this reaction begin to kick in? Can ghouls die of starvation the way humans do?"

Levi grunted what would otherwise have been a laugh. If any part of this situation had been funny. "I doubt any ghoul's ever gotten to that point. After a few weeks, you lose control. If I were free…" He paused, shuddered. "By now I'd have killed my own damn mother if she was close enough." Much good it would have done him, since his mother had been a ghoul. He presumed ghouls weren't cannibalistic by nature.

"And how long has it been since you last ate, Levi?" Hange peered over her clipboard, frowning.

Levi's stomach howled. "Over two months now."

The scientist paused. Slowly, she blanched. "Oh dear."

Soon after that, the woman gathered her things and hurried out of her room with long, quick strides. She left the lamp behind her. It was dark outside, so Levi heaved himself off of the bed and crawled back into his dark little corner of the room where the light didn't reach. He stared at the vanishing walls with wide, blood-red eyes, imagining what would have happened if he'd been strong enough to wrench the bars aside. The bloody images made his stomach wail with loss. It was… mortifying to be this out of control. Terrifying. Was the ghoul part of him stronger than the parts that made him Levi? Could a lifetime of moral decisions, of resolve to be good, simply be washed away by pure animal instinct? Did anything he decided matter in the end, or was he just a ravening beast pretending at humanity after all?

Was he going to find out soon if ghouls really could starve to death? Would he even be conscious of it, or by the end would he just be some salivating, snapping, rabid dog? Any moment could be his last conscious breath.

He stayed like that, doubled over with pain, until lamp burned out and the small window above him began to lighten with morning.

Footsteps rang sharply on the other side of the door. Muffled words were exchanged, and the door was opened to admit Erwin, Hange, and the very large box being carried in Hange's arms. She thumped it down on the table with a yelp of relief, shaking out her arms as she aimed a smile at Levi's corner.

"Good morning! Did you sleep well?"

"Ghouls don't sleep," he rasped back, deadpan. Hange, who had first seen him asleep, laughed.

"Someone's feeling lively!"

"Hange says you're dying," Erwin cut in. Levi shrugged, the movement made strange by his inability to unglue his arms from where they were locked around his abdomen.

"I might be."

Erwin said nothing else. Hange glanced at him before awkwardly saying, "Well, yes, and in light of that, we've brought you some food. Let's see you try to eat it, alright?" She busied herself opening the box while Levi made an effort to lift his head off of the floor. He squinted through the bangs that fell across his face. They'd brought… food? No, surely not. He'd expected them to maybe chop his head off with one of those fancy swords of theirs when it came clear that he'd lost his mind to the hunger entirely. As a mercy or a punishment, whichever. He'd expected them to continue trying to experiment on him until he literally perished in front of them. It made no sense for them to bring him human meat. That was the very thing Erwin had fought to keep him from doing not two nights ago! That was the very thing that the Survey Corps fought against—_the eating of people_!

He was obscurely disappointed despite this to see that the first thing Hange brought out of the box was a sandwich. The smell made him curl his lip, his disgust only increasing as Hange poked it through the bars at him.

"I can't eat that shit."

"I want to see you try," Hange reiterated patiently. Levi growled.

"It's not that easy!"

"If it doesn't work, we have other options. I want to try this first." She stared expectantly at him. Erwin lifted his eyebrows pointedly. It was obvious that neither one was going to let up until he tried to eat the godforsaken thing.

It was truly torturous, pulling himself to a semblance of uprightness so that he could shuffle over to the bars and pick up the disgusting piece of filth. It smelled worse than a sewer. It was pure willpower that brought the thing to his mouth. Maybe if this didn't work, they'd try their 'other options'. With any luck, one of those options would be a swift blade to the neck.

Under the watchful eyes of Hange and Erwin, Levi bit off a corner of the sandwich, chewed twice rapidly, and swallowed. His entire body shuddered in revulsion at the spread of taste throughout his mouth, soaking into his tongue. The feel of the morsel sliding down his gullet was doubly terrible. The rest of the sandwich dropped from his fingers to break apart on the ground when his hand flew up to press against his mouth. Sweat broke out across his forehead. The taste wouldn't go away.

The sound of laughter rang out from the other side of the bars. "Ahahahahaha, ah, I take it you didn't like it much?" Hange asked, covering her grin with her hands.

"A little melodramatic, don't you think?" Erwin asked, though he too was smiling.

Levi swallowed again on nothing. Tentatively removed his hand. "It tastes like weeks-old bird shit pressed between two loaves of sewer mud." He swiped a tongue across his teeth and discovered the taste still lingering.

All at once, something tightened at the back of Levi's throat. The familiar signal sent him rushing over to the latrine in the corner, where he leaned over just in time as his gorge rose. He huddled over the plumbing for several minutes, retching and gagging until a stream of bile finally carried the hateful concoction with it out of his stomach and into the pipes. He panted for breath, throat working. Behind him, the laughter had stopped.

"Um, so, this isn't you being dramatic, is it?" Hange asked, a little sheepishly.

Levi rested his head against the wall above the latrine, not turning. "If I could just eat human food, I'd do that instead. Even if it tasted just the same as that sandwich, it would be preferable to the way I have to live now. It's not a fucking choice."

The atmosphere was all at once grim again. "That does make sense, however strange," Hange admitted. "I can't imagine many ghouls would choose to endanger themselves unnecessarily or go through the pain of that hunger if they could simply force themselves to eat the same things humans could."

"Then why the demonstration?"

It was Erwin who answered. "We're exploring options."

The next thing shoved through the bars was a strip of dried pork. It shortly joined the bite of sandwich in the latrine. Next, a hunk of raw pig meat. That, too, finished the experiment floating in a puddle of yellow bile. Levi's throat burned almost as badly as his stomach. With each successive failure, Hange and Erwin's faces turned grimmer.

"I'd really hoped the raw pork might work," she sighed in response to Levi's glare. "Pig meat is extremely similar to human meat, you know. There was the possibility that it might give your body the required nutrients."

"If it was that simple, some ghoul would have figured it out centuries ago!" Levi snarled, done to death with the woman's experiments. "It's not _about_ nutrients or whatever, it's something else. Some kind of energy." So the legends went, he seemed to recall. It all seemed like mystical bullshit, but the proof was pretty self-evident that _something_ other than simple calorie consumption was happening when he ate. The bottom line was, "I have _no other choice_ or don't you think I would have fucking _tried it by now_?"

"Levi. Calm yourself," Erwin commanded. Levi drew back hard against the wall, tangling his fingers in his sleeves. His anger was flaring. It might carry him away at any second, leave him pressing against those bars again reaching vainly for the warm, living meat just beyond. That anger was only fed by having to obey a command given by Erwin, but he nevertheless took a deep, slow breath through his nose.

"I never _wanted_ to live like this," he spat, quieter.

"We know," Hange replied, reaching into the box again. "It's not fair for anyone to be born like that. I pity the Titans for the same reason."

"Those creatures don't deserve to live."

Hange shot him a look over her shoulder. "Everything alive deserves to live."

The statement was possible the most bizarre thing Levi had heard her say so far, but he wasn't given the chance to formulate a response. Out of the box, she drew a wrapped piece of raw meat that immediately filled the room with the mouthwatering, metallic smell of blood. Human blood.

The package was pushed through the bars just like the other pieces of human food had been. Hange sat on her heels on the other side, looking at Levi. Erwin did the same behind her. Levi's eyes flicked from the food to the people and back again. He inhaled deeply. Definitely human meat. Male, possibly? Dead for about a day, stored somewhere cold to fight back decomposition. More than fresh enough to set his heart racing.

With enormous effort, Levi did not so much as twitch in its direction. He narrowed his reddened eyes at his watchers. "What the fuck is this? Where did you get that?"

Erwin spoke in a slow, measured tone. "He died yesterday afternoon. Fell off of a roof while repairing it and broke his neck. His family sent him for cremation this morning. They will be receiving the ashes of a stray dog instead."

Levi's jaw clenched. "And you're just fine with lying to them and defacing the corpse of their loved one? Why do this at all?"

His gaze didn't waver. "We need you alive, Levi."

"You're soldiers! You're supposed to _kill_ things like me!"

Now Hange spoke. "People die every day, even in peaceful places like Wall Sina. Accidents happen. The corpses left behind decay underground to feed grass and worms, or are burned into uselessness. In my opinion, cremation is far more disrespectful than allowing the body to return to the natural progression of energy exchange that is death and birth."

Levi scoffed. Survey Corps. Fucking philosophers, every one of them. They had to have some kind of morbid poetry in their heads to deal with the grim reality that their jobs basically amounted to plugging holes in the walls with their own corpses. No doubt every one of them had some equally flowery way of mentally prettying-up the fact that death was terrifying and going to happen to them soon.

"That's just a fancy way of saying that soon, somebody's husband is going to be turned into shit because you fed him to a starving dog. You're kidding yourself if you think any part of this is noble." He sneered at the scientist's surprised face. Her brows furrowed with anger, glasses flashing as she leaped to her feet to seize the bars in both hands.

"You're not a _dog_, Levi!" Hange snapped. "You can think and feel; you care for your friends and you're disgusted by the way you have to live! Anyone can see it!"

"Does it make it better that I kill people if I cry over them afterwards?" Levi demanded, clinging desperately to the wall. The smell of the package was curling invitingly in his nostrils. He was fighting back drool. His stomach cramped furiously.

He couldn't give in. He had to remember. This man wasn't a stray beggar from the underground. He was a hardworking, innocent man from Wall Rose. He deserved respect for his life. He didn't deserve to amount to nothing more than fuel for Levi's foul existence.

"It doesn't. But this way, you're not killing anybody at all," Erwin pointed out. "Isn't this better than the way you were living before? Why would you fight it?"

It occurred to Levi that Erwin had only ever seen him actively in the process of killing a woman whose victim was stashed out of sight in a crate. The man had no clue that she was a human trafficker, or that Levi had chosen to live in the sewers as a scavenger rather than a hunter. Well, whatever convinced him. The more monstrous Levi looked, the more swiftly they'd get tired of keeping him imprisoned. He said at random, "You might be lying. You might have killed that man yourselves."

"What happened to smelling lies?" Erwin smirked. Levi choked down a snarl. Was the smug bastard _ever_ going to let that go? He changed tack, scrambling desperately for something that would convince these people to leave him alone.

"My life is my own fucking responsibility. It's not your job."

"I made it my job when I took you off of the streets and nearly starved you to death."

Desperately, "Would you feed a captured Titan if it looked like it was dying?"

Erwin folded his arms. "I wouldn't. But you're not a Titan, either. I became a soldier to save lives—because everybody deserves to be able to live. As long as you're not hurting anybody, you deserve the same. This way hurts no one. So eat."

"Why are you resisting so much?" Hange asked, softly. Cajolingly. "You're in a lot of pain, you said it yourself. We're offering to help you."

Good question. Levi hesitated, not really sure what exactly was making him recoil from the most invitingly delicious thing he'd seen in months. The distrust that kept him anchored against this wall, despite the bone-deep instinct pulling him away…

He remembered Ackerman holding up a woman by the hair, his other arm coated in the ocean of blood spilling across the front of her body from the neat slice in her neck. The voice urging him to eat his fill before they disposed of the body. Levi had asked what she'd done. Why they were killing her. The answer had been some platitude along the lines that she didn't deserve to live as much as Levi did. Levi had been a child at the time. After he'd eaten his fill, Ackerman had led him home by the hand, warm and sticky with blood. It had taken years for Levi to start wondering why Ackerman had been killing people aside from Levi's hunger. How Ackerman already knew the ins and outs of teaching Levi to get away with murder. He'd always wondered how, precisely, Ackerman had come across Levi as a child, and what had happened to his real, ghoul parents.

It was pathetic for a grown man to still have daddy issues, Levi thought with disgust. He shook the memories away.

"…Help comes with strings," he said, finally. Everything did. Even family. "Maybe I don't want to be this 'key' you keep yapping about."

Erwin lifted a sardonic eyebrow. "You refuse to associate with or be the cause of human death, and yet you don't wish to help us fight back against the number one cause of it? I don't believe it for a second. You're a moral man, Levi. You're going to help us, and you're going to do it willingly. Because you want to protect those friends of yours, because you want to prevent the extinction of innocent humans—one way or another, every choice ahead of you leads to this. Either you eat now, or you die uselessly."

Hange tilted her head and smiled. "Didn't you say something about life deserving more meaning than death? How about your own, hmm?"

Meaning. Meaning? Levi had never considered it in his life. _Meaning_. Like a monster who fed off of corpses could have a meaningful life. Could help humanity. He'd scoffed at Erwin and Hange's suggestions that he could, and yet… They offered him food. They offered him support and secrecy, and understanding. They offered him… meaning?

A purpose. They were offering him a purpose if he stopped fighting and just took it. It was his choice, not something they could force on him. He could choose death or purpose. Hilarious, really, just how badly those two conflicting desires had torn at him throughout his life, and he was only just seeing it now. The slums, that dreary lightless, hopeless sewer that called to him with the promise of an end to his parasitic existence… and the two people living in his house who demanded his devotion, his care to keep them alive and safe. Purpose or death? Farlan and Isabel or a sudden, pointless end like the countless victims of his foster father?

It wasn't even a choice. Levi had made his decision when he'd followed his friends aboveground to join the Survey Corps.

His ability to resist snapped like a twig. Levi was on his knees on the ground tearing into the meat with hands and teeth before he could register that he'd even moved. The meat slid down his throat slick and cold and soothing on the acid-scoured interior. It settled in his belly like a wash of water across all of his muscles. His abdomen loosened its rigid clench. More meat followed, and more. Hange twice had to pull more preserved pieces out of her box, which were devoured in short order. Levi felt his whole body relaxing fit to float. His sense of urgency abated wonderfully until he felt full, calm, and healthy, leaning against the wall to lick the blood off of his fingers. He glared at the still-watching Hange and Erwin with vision that was losing its edge, reverting back into the dark brown-on-white of normal human irises and sclera. For the first time in weeks, Levi felt like himself again.

Irritated and profoundly humiliated, but himself. And at long last, back in control.

"You must have pretty high hopes for what I can help you with after all, if you're willing to stoop to this to keep me around," he remarked acidly.

"We told you before," Erwin answered, incongruously satisfied, "you might be the greatest weapon humanity's ever come across. Superhuman strength, enhanced senses, incredible agility, few to none of our biological weaknesses… I'd be a fool not to put that to use." Ruthless, but Levi could easily see the logic. The man had clearly been willing to do anything to win against the Titans back when he'd just been picking talented criminals out of the sewer. This was whole new worlds of desperate ingenuity.

"You've been bizarrely peppy and supportive for a man just doing what he has to do to win," Levi noted, looking between both of them. "What kind of fucking speech is 'you deserve to live, we'll give you a purpose' to give a weapon?"

Hange, packing up her box, looked back and smiled. "We want you to want to help us, too, of course. A tool against the Titans would be nice, but a powerful ally would be even better. You keep proving how far you're willing to go for your friends. Wouldn't you like to be our friend, Levi?"

"You fucking _shot_ me. I want to rip your throat out with my teeth."

"So that's a no? How about Erwin, then?"

"On second thought, I wouldn't touch any part of you with my teeth if you were the last human on earth, shitty four-eyes!"

"Awww, and I thought we were getting closer! I dismembered a corpse for you, you know!"

"Fuck off and die."

Hunger abated, Levi considered briefly the idea of attempting to break out of his cell. With his full strength back, he might at least be able to take a crack at the hinges, and he'd definitely be able to take down his jailers. For all their attempts to coerce him into eating, he noticed that nobody had mentioned Isabel or Farlan's safety this time. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.

…A purpose, they'd promised. A stupid, idealistic pipe dream of saving humanity with his special inhuman powers or some such bullshit. It rankled. Only a stupid child would let himself be convinced by a hope like that.

But Isabel and Farlan were probably safer while Levi was here, drawing Erwin's attention. Hopefully, they could steal their documents and get away while he was distracted. Maybe they'd even kill the bastard themselves. In the meantime, there wasn't much harm in sticking around to see what crazy kind of plan these idiots were hatching. He could leave any time he wanted to.

Levi settled cross-legged on the bed and eyed with disgust the ruins of his once-white shirt and the days-old blood still peppered across his skin. "Oi, any chance of getting some water in here?"


End file.
